WSJ editorial: 'Deport Nikki Haley'

Nikki Haley should be deported, a provocative headline from the Wall Street Journal editorial board reads in an article published Wednesday evening.

But that headline, which mirrors a widely denounced tweet by Ann Coulter, is misleading: The editorial is actually a rousing defense of the South Carolina governor and newfound Republican lightning rod.

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Haley, who delivered the GOP response to President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address on Tuesday, is an “articulate conservative” who has won two gubernatorial elections in the state, the editorial board writes. "It's a sign of the GOP’s distemper that some conservatives denounced her because she didn’t denounce legal immigration.”

A potential vice president pick, Haley is the daughter of Indian immigrants and the first female and first minority governor of South Carolina. “I am the proud daughter of Indian immigrants who reminded my brothers, my sister and me every day how blessed we were to live in this country,” she said in Tuesday night's response.

The Journal notes that Coulter tweeted that Republican poll leader Donald Trump should deport Haley, and Trump later called Haley “very weak on immigration.”

“Are we talking about the same Nikki Haley?” the editorial board writes. “The woman who says ‘illegal immigration is not welcome in South Carolina’? Who signed a law toughening the state’s illegal immigration reform act, which requires employers to verify the immigration status of new hires? Who has fought President Obama’s bid to resettle unvetted Syrian refugees? And whose state has joined 16 others in a lawsuit against Mr. Obama for what they say is his unconstitutional executive order on illegal immigration?”

The newspaper, long a vocal advocate of immigration reform, writes that Haley has sought to differentiate between a functioning, legal immigration system that Republicans want and the unlawful, broken, arbitrary system that exists now under the Obama administration.

“The attacks on Ms. Haley show that many on the right these days oppose any immigrants, even those who arrive legally,” they conclude. “They also want to make opposition to immigration a GOP litmus test. A party that rejects Nikki Haley as a spokeswoman is one that doesn’t really want to build a governing majority.”

Coulter told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday that her tweet was "a joke."